That's Incredible! and the yogi in the box

Yesterday, my post about John Moschitta, Jr.'s 1981 appearance on That's Incredible! kindled memories among commenters of Yogi "Kudu" who famously contorted himself into a small plexiglass box on the show. For many years I too wondered what became of that fellow. Turns out, most of us have been spelling his name wrong, making it difficult to find any useful information on Google. The magical man is actually Yogi Coudoux and he is alive, well, and living in France where he runs the Centre Yogi Coudoux and still performs amazing feats of the body and mind like "‬La Tarentule," above. ‪ In 2006, he even published a book in the USA, titled Breathing Life: Yogi Coudoux's Pranayama Techniques. Nearly thirty years after That's Incredible!, I wonder if Yogi Coudoux can still squeeze himself into that tiny box.

20 Responses to “That's Incredible! and the yogi in the box”

Oh my dear. Memories. I live in Canada and most kids in my neighbourhood didn’t have cable TV and therefore were not able to watch “That’s Incredible”. So I got my “TI” news from a boy in my class named Arthur who always used his ‘show and tell’ time to tell us about what he saw on “TI” the night before. Soon, I started asking my mom if I could go to my friends house to watch TI each week. Yogi Coudoux is a part of my childhood. Most people my age in my city remember the amazement they felt when first watching him – that was back when TV watching was a shared cultural experience. Wonderful.

OMG! I clearly remember this guy. As “Yep” said I remember all those shows but this yogi truely inspired me. After seeing him I would routinely crawl all the way to the bottom of my sleeping bag (didn’t want to make my bed so I slept in a sleeping bag for years)and stay there for god knows how long. I called myself a yogurt.

My whole family would gather around the tube for “That’s Incredible” every week during its run. The show introduced me to the oddity that is Spontaneous Human Combustion. I was so traumatized I never watched another episode after that and for months, nay years, I was convinced I would burst into flames at any moment. This coming from a kid who would hide under the sofa every time The Count would come on Sesame Street. Ah childhood, good times that.

This was one of the two TI acts I have retained over the decades. The other one was the belly dancer who, lying on her back, could flip quarters with her belly. Seems that she’s still at it (!):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUZQZzcvlZk
This version goes pretty slow, but make sure you watch the last minute or so.

I don’t remember anything else I saw on That’s Incredible, but I remember this guy. I used to stuff myself into a carpet-covered cat scratching post because I didn’t have a Plexiglas box of my own. Where is the video of him on TI?

Wow. This is so absurdly dramatized. I taught myself to do that (except for the jumping-off-a-box-onto-my-hands part at the end) when I was 9 years old, after I saw Weird Al put a leg behind his head and hop around on the other foot on stage. Weird Al’s show was much more interesting.

One stunt that I remember failing was a guy that tried to jump over a car as it was coming towards him. His leg hit the roof and broke.

One stunt we copied was a guy that caught arrows that were shot at him. We saw that and immediately did the same thing. If you were able to catch one you passed the test to become a ninja. I think my parents had just a 30lb pull bow. How we didn’t get hurt is amazing.

Reminds me strongly of a David Foster Wallace story recently in the New Yorker, about a boy who learns to contort and kisses parts of his body, similar to this yogi. Fun story (and great review for anatomy class) titled Backbone